Karaoke Forums

Okay!

First I shall introduce myself.

My name is George, i'm 25 and I'm from Mexico, i'm a singing newbie and i'm WIDELY interested in recording my first songs. Now... the thing is that I plan to simulate a recording studio at home by using my PC and I wanted to ask you guys if you know the elements (Software and Hardware) needed to provide the BEST POSSIBLE recording quality.

According to what I have researched I seem to need something like this:

- Recording software (I currently have Adobe Audition and Goldwave. I've heard they're good...)

- 128 Bit PCI soundcard (This friend of mine told me that Creative Soundcards rule the market)

- A microphone (My BIG question is: Do I need a Special one? Cuz i've tried recording my voice with a standard PC microphone and the sound's really crappy and I dont know whether it is a micro issue or a soundcard issue)

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in Advance

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Luis Fonsi is GOD!

YashiroTCM

Since nobody has responded, I'll take a crack

First of all, I think you won't find much help here since this is mainly a Karaoke forum. You would find more help in such place as: http://homerecording.com/bbs/ OR
http://studio-central.com

ETC. Basically, those forums with PC/Home Recording in mind.

As far as a decent PC recording setup goes, you would need:

1. Fast CPU with LOTS of RAM (I would recommend at least 512MB RAM and Pentium 4 or compatible)

2. Fast hard drive (preferrably, a dedicated partition or drive just for recording). 7200RPM or better and plenty of space is recommended (80GB is common since WAV files can take up a lot of space.) You can split your single drive to 2 partition, 1 for system files and one just for your recording files.

3. SoundBlaster card is good for ...gaming mostly ... but for home use, it should be OK. There are other better cards more suitable for recording, such as the M-Audiophile 2496, Echo line, Aardvard, DSP, etc.

4. You would need a sequencer such as Cakewalk, Cubase, PowerTrack Pro, etc. to record

5. You also need a mic AND a preamp (if you don't use a mixer with built-in pre). Your "crabby" mic came with the PC wouldn't be sufficient as you've already found out. Mainly, there are dynamic mics and condenser mics. You'd need to do your own research to find what best suits your needs. For vocal recording, most likely you'll end up with a LD condenser mic (and these mics defintely need Phantom power from your pre and a pop filter.) Also a closed-type headphones for good isolation during recording.

That's just your basics, and as you go further, you'd find out about compressor/ limiter/ gate, effect units such as reverb/chorus etc. You may end up buying a mixer and a pair of monitors also !! ...

And then you'll need to learn & experience the art of mixing/mastering your own projects too ...
It can be an epxensive hobby and a lot to learn in order to make good home recordings ...

Good luck and Have Fun !!

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Peace

I would agree with kake on most points except for the sound card. The best way to go is to get some sort of external firewire sound device like the MOTU 828 you can pick up a used one on ebay for between $400-$600. The original version is just fine dont worry about getting the newer mkII. That will give you multitrack (8 to be exact) capability and also has your mic preamps built in. It is a bit more expensive than a creative card, however if you want to really do computer recording on a semi-professional level it's really about the least you can get. I actually have a setup using two 828's right now and it works great. As for software I found the easiest to use is Soinic Foundry's (I think sony bought this company) Vegas 4.0 software. It doesn't have the most features but it can do non-linear video as well as multitrack audio and it's very easy to learn and understand. If you have any other questions feel free to drop me a line.

One thing I would add is that most sound cards (sound blaster etc) do not have the best mic inputs. I therefore use my mixer to provide a line level input to the sound card.

My recording setup consists of:

SM-58 (a large diaphragm condenser would be cool)
Sound blaster Live
Adobe Audition
Carvin C1644 16 channel mixer (also used in my PA)
Carvin closed headphones

This produces very clean sound with very low noise. If only I could sing well At least my equipment doesn't hold me back.

I would record everything dry and then do all processing in the software (so you don't to buy the compressor, graphic eq etc now)

Morten

Question for you pros.
Do you need to dampen the hard walls of the room you are recording in, or do you use a studio?
Often sound recording in a standard room sounds like the inside of a barrel...
Just askin'
Jerry

I found that as long as the room is carpeted and you have a few pieces of well placed egg crate you are pretty good. Usually 1 piece of 2'x2' foam egg create for a small room in the center of each wall and the cieling is good.

Hi Jerry,

The room I use to record in is 10'x10' with a 10' foot ceiling. Acoustically,
it's a nightmare. To combat this I simply put some plant hanger hooks
in the ceiling and hang a couple of heavy quilted moving blankets from
them. It's cheap, quick to set up and tear down and works pretty good
to "deaden" the room. The thing to keep in mind is that anything you add
to your recorded vocal, such as reverb or EQ, you're also adding to the
"sound" of the room. Hope this helps.

All the Best,
Lee

Jerry,
I have a room that is 1,200 sq. ft. & yes I have "Auralux" foam in 3'X3' squares centered 10' apart on the walls and about 6' high on a room that has 13' ceilings. and the same foam in the corners from floor to ceiling glued to plywood panels.

Amazingly it's still live enough to do vocals and accidently sound really great in there when we tested the room with "pink Noise" even the designer was stunned how accidentally close it was. we still have limitations of microphone placement and where drums and vocals can be recorded from though. But the reverb in the room is still quite acceptable.

I hope that helps.

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Brian D.
(BHB)

I just let my room acummulate a LOT of dust and that seems to do the trick .... at least that's what I tell my husband hahaha! Seriously though I've seen that "Pink" term on my reverb setting's and always wondered what it was. What exaclty does Pink mean? And please Brian .... explain it in Blonde language!

Sheree,
"pink noise" is a static sounding noise .. kind of like static that stretches across the audio spectrum (on my test equipment) from 10 khz to 10 hz.
and measures the equalization of the room for boominess (low frequency problems) and other anomolies. Then we Pre-tune out inputs on the recording devices to it as a baseline of where to start when tracking any thing in any project.

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Brian D.
(BHB)

Sheree,

Edit: explanation changed to be more correct!

I hope this understandable...

White noise has equal amounts of noise at all frequencies. The result is that the noise per octace increases with frequency (since one octave at low frequencies is ex. 20-40 Hz whereas at high frequencies it is 10-20kHz).

To create pink noise a filter has been inserted on the white noise so that all octaves contain the same amount of noise.

White noise sounds very hissy whereas pink noise sounds more balanced to the ear.

Does this explanation make sense to you?

Morten

Sheree,

the reason you want to use pink noise for eq, is because a real time spectrum analyzer (RTA), or your ear, resolves noise in octaves (or subdivisions thereof). So, a perfectly balanced room has a flat spectrum on an RTA when pink noise is used. This is not be the case with white noise.

Morten

morten,
I used boomieness and the low frequency feed back that acompanies it as a example because that is a common problem with room with high ceilings or larger rooms.

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Brian D.
(BHB)

Brian,

you examples were fine.

The comment: "Edit: explanation changed to be more correct!" referred to me editing my own text to make it more correct than the first version I submitted. It did not attempt to reflect on the correctness of your post!

Cheers,

Morten

I'm pleased you all had so much information.
Back in the old days, we hung "moving" blankets on the walls too. The real reason was to avoid post production costs. Any audio that didn't need to be re-recorded save the producer $$$. We had many issues, as lighting and audio needed to be balanced for the "look and feel" of the film.
While I was primarily support for the production company,
(Supply camera, sound, grip, lighting) I did do quite a bit of second unit sound recording and second unit camera.
We did only location filming so we had the problem of unknown "sets" and we carried many sound deadening products.

I'm pleased to see the reality of recording hasn't changed much.

Thanks for the info.

Jerry